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About Me

Amat Libris

I love books! And knitting, and writing, and history, and anything else which offers a distraction from Real Life.
You can email me at: bibliophilic at hotmail dot com, but note that I do not accept books for review.

What's in a Name? 4

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04 March 2010

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?

More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

There’s a National Grammar Day? *Sigh* ... I wish we had one of those.

In answer to the question: none of the above. Which is surprising, given that those are just the sorts of books I’d adore. I’m forever mentally editing other people’s errors wherever I encounter them. Bad grammar makes me cringe, and does not make me think well of the perpetrator.

And yet for a self-confessed grammar pedant I know very little about the subject, beyond what I’ve simply absorbed by osmosis. Around Year 4, I learned about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. And that’s it. I can also identify adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions, and I know what split infinitives are because I looked it up. (And I’ve heard of things called participles, but have no idea what they are.)

But then, I came through an education system which taught me precisely zero history prior to 1788, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.